[The_CEO]

Has anyone read this yet?

http://www.salon.com/2015/04/17/my_own_p...e_fighter/

http://thepenguinpress.com/book/the-prof...-to-watch/

[H1N1]

(05-03-2015 10:12 PM)The_CEO Wrote:  

Has anyone read this yet?

http://www.salon.com/2015/04/17/my_own_p...e_fighter/

http://thepenguinpress.com/book/the-prof...-to-watch/

http://www.jack-donovan.com/axis/2015/04...-the-cage/

Good write up

[Lucky]

I read the discussion between the author, Jonathan Gottschall and Sam Harris.

Fighting: A Conversation

Quote:

Harris: Jonathan, you and I seem to have had similar midlife crises: We each woke up one morning and were suddenly very interested in violence, self-defense, martial arts, and related topics. But you went so far as to have a real mixed martial arts (MMA) cage match, the training for which is the subject of your new book, The Professor in the Cage. How did this manic idea take hold of you?

Gottschall:Well, I think I was 38 at the time (I’m 42 now). I’m an adjunct English professor at a small college in Pennsylvania, and I’ve been an adjunct for ten years. I make about $16,000 a year. I publish fairly well but, for various reasons, it’s pretty clear that my academic career is not going to come to anything. The tenure track hasn’t happened, and it’s probably not going to.

So I kind of reached this point where it was an authentic midlife crisis. It was like, Here I am: I’m pushing up on middle age, and I don’t quite have a real job. What am I going to do with my life? I knew the first thing I had to do was quit my job and move on to something else, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I really wanted to be an English professor when I grew up. It was my great ambition in life.

So I thought, “Well, maybe I can get myself fired.” At about that time, when I was going through this sort of crisis, an MMA gym—Mark Shrader’s Academy of Mixed Martial Arts—opened across the street from the English Department, and I thought that was just hilarious. A cage fighting gym was now as far away from my office as you could throw a snowball. The juxtaposition of the incredibly refined world of the English Department and this savagery across the street struck me as very, very funny, and I started to fantasize about going over there.

The fantasy was never about “Hey, I’m a serious tough guy. I’m going to go over there and kick ass.” It was like a joke. I thought I could make people in the department laugh. They’d see me walk over there. They’d look up from their poems and there I’d be, in the cage, getting beat up.

And then I had this other funny thought: “That’s how I’ll do it. That’s how I’ll get myself fired.

The book seems interesting. The author's inspiration for entering cage fighting has elements of "Fight Club."

I think I'll wait for the paperback release and buy it.